Nonlinear vibration absorber optimal design via asymptotic approach

This paper tackles the classical problem of Vibration Absorbers (VAs) operating in the nonlinear dynamic regime. Since traditional linear VAs suffer from the drawback of a narrow bandwith and numerous structures exhibit nonlinear behavior, nonlinear absorbers are of practical interest. The resonant dynamic behavior of a nonlinear hysteretic VA attached to a damped nonlinear structure is investigated analytically via asymptotics and numerically via path following. The response of the reduced-order model, obtained by projecting the dynamics of the primary structure onto the mode to control, is evaluated using the method of multiple scales up to the first nonlinear order beyond the resonance. Here, the asymptotic response of the two-degree-of-freedom system with a 1:1 internal resonance is shown to be in very close agreement with the results of path following analyses. The asymptotic solution lends itself to a versatile optimization based on differential evolutionary.